The otherwise “ordinary” life of Helen Newlove, Lady Newlove, who has died after a short illness aged 63, was turned into something first of all extraordinary and then remarkable by the savage, unprovoked murder of her husband outside their family home on what had been a quiet summer’s evening in 2007. It propelled the one-time legal secretary on to a public platform and into a passionate, unending campaign to improve community life, confront antisocial behaviour and provide proper help and support to the victims of crime.
Within three years she was a member of the House of Lords and two years after that she was appointed victims’ commissioner, a post she held until 2019 and to which she was reappointed in 2023. She later told Desert Island Discs that she felt “like Hilda Ogden” from Coronation Street when she first arrived at Westminster and wanted to tell fellow peers: “I’m Helen from the north and I live in a council house.”
